Kay B. Brown evinces realness on record
There is, unsurprisingly, a common element between a lot of rock music and hip-hop. It’s something I reflect on more and more as I get older and think back on the impression certain bands made on me as a teenager. That common bond is a sort of adolescent male fantasy fulfillment expressed mainly through braggadocio, posturing and, for lack of a better term, self-promoting trash talk.
I genuinely laugh out loud now to think of the omnipresent scrawny, 120-pound boys in spandex with a head full of hair spray who screamed and snarled about their sexual prowess and dangerous nature in the eighties.
Hip-hop, too, was (and is) rife with angry young men rapping about being hardened by the toughness of street life, who actually grew up in nice, middle-class suburban neighborhoods.
It would be easy to cry “fake” and “poseur”, but the music business is performance art after all, and there’s nothing too shocking about the notion that many of those acts are, well, an act. That is a common occurrence, but it isn’t a rule, and there are plenty of notable exceptions.
Lemmy Kilmeister legitimately seemed like a man you wouldn’t want to run afoul of, and a great deal of the hardest, grittiest rap was created by people who really did grow up in the mean streets under circumstances their suburban counterparts couldn’t fathom, much less survive.
As a musician and a person who writes about other musicians, I respect talent. I respect a good act.
There is another layer of respect though, a much deeper one that is reserved for authenticity, for the artists whose acts aren’t merely acts but are instead reflections of their real world experiences. That is one of many reasons that I am continually impressed with one of the very best hip-hop performers in the city, the region, and the southeast.
Kay B. Brown does not wear a mask on stage that he takes off and hangs by the door when he goes home at night. Every word, every nuance, every expression of pain, anger, hope, and love, is drawn directly from his life. He isn’t just a performer, although he has worked hard to refine his skills as a performer to a razor’s edge. He is as much a poet, philosopher, writer, and creative intellectual as he is anything else and his music speaks with a voice that cannot be faked.
Every track on his latest release, the long-awaited Mitchell Ave (Story 2 Tell II), is alive with the passion of a man who knows himself, his world, and has a lot of unfiltered truth to share. Tracks like “Let’s Talk About It”, “Dope”, and “Testimony” pull no punches regarding the good, the bad, and the ugly of urban life. There is righteous anger, but not bitterness. Unvarnished realism, but not hopelessness.
In fact, if there is one thing most especially that Brown has captured that so many others fail to do. It is a message of positivity and affirmation, a message of “This is the way things are, but not the way they have to be”.
Like a wise older brother, he comes from a place of love, but tough love and no-nonsense. The album, several years in the making, evinces all the wisdom and careful crafting of an artist who genuinely has something to say, something that everyone needs to hear.
Mitchell Ave (Story 2 Tell II) is hands down one of the most important, socially conscious, nakedly honest albums I have ever heard, of any genre. It is a masterpiece that further cements the reality that in the world of artists, Kay B is one of the best of us.